Denver's Golden Pundits

Because their handles are seen in so many articles, the three tend to get calls from far-flung reporters whenever a Colorado story goes national. As a result, they've all appeared in major venues. Ciruli's list includes the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN. On occasion, the demand is so high that Atkinson just says no. "When Scott McInnis announced that he wasn't going to run for Senate, I had five phone calls from out-of-state press, primarily in Washington," she says. "You can spend your entire day doing those kinds of things, as opposed to things you can bill for."

Sondermann makes the same distinction. During one drive with his teenage daughter Katrina, he took several phone calls about a breaking news item, and after he was done, he mentioned that some people call him a media whore. "She said, 'I really don't think you're a media whore,'" he recalls. " 'I think you're a media slut -- because whores usually get paid.'"

Maybe that's why there are so few new recruits in the golden rolodex: The benefits suck.

Re-sources: Even as most media organizations continue to quote old reliables, Colorado Public Radio is experimenting with an initiative that reaches out to more than just the usual suspects. The Public Insight Network asks listeners to sign up as potential sources on the broadcaster's website, www.cpr.org. Those who do will receive an e-mail about once a month asking them to share their thoughts on select topics. Staffers at KCFR, the service's news-and-information arm, then sift through the responses looking for interesting angles or new stories they can investigate.

Network boss (and former Post national/foreign editor) Dan Meyers points out that Public Insight members don't do the reporting themselves, à la YourHub.com. "We're retaining a gatekeeper role as journalists rather than saying, 'Hey, this is a blog. Everyone pitch in,'" he notes. "Let's say you're a reporter at the Post, and you're assigned to talk to people about light rail -- to ask them, 'Do you ride light rail? If so, what have your experiences been?' You might be able to talk to fifteen or twenty people in an hour. But we might get a hundred responses."

Or perhaps even more. Since the Network was launched last month, around 400 people have added their names to the roster, and Meyers says two major stories expected to air in mid-May have already come out of the suggestions. One concerns people's experiences, pro and con, with the T-Rex project; the other concerns health-care issues raised by a couple of respondents.

The approach has worked so well for Minnesota Public Radio, which pioneered it, that New Hampshire Public Radio is also giving it a try -- and Meyers says expectations at CPR have already been exceeded. He's keeping up with the info onslaught thus far, but concedes that "if this thing continues to grow, we're already discussing how to grow with it." In the meantime, he emphasizes to those who haven't already joined the club that "we absolutely will not ever use this list for fundraising. There's an enormous and impenetrable barrier between the Public Insight project and the fundraising side of the station."

If not, the e-mails they get back may be ugly.